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Divorce Makes You a Bad Person... Again

When I was seven, my parents divorced. It was ugly, really ugly, and they more or less never spoke again. Not even when my mother was dying. No good bye, nothing. Four kids and seventeen years together and then BOOM! Nothing. Since then divorce has changed quite a bit. Plenty of couples with children decide to stop being couples without ending their family.

My own "co-parent" and I stopped being a couple ten years ago; we are certainly still family. We eat family dinners together at least twice a week, celebrate all holidays and birthdays together, go to family weddings and reunions together, and more or less act like any two people raising children together except we're not together. We are hardly the only ones. A lot of "divorced" couples have managed to put their children and families front and center while also creating lives that are their own.

Despite this trend toward a more familiial and friendly divorce, divorce is increasingly seen as a sign of bad parenting and psychological failure among many Americans, especially educated and upper-middle class Americans. According to a recent article in the New York Times, for educated Americans the divorce rate is steadily declining and coming with more and more social stigma attached.

The experience of being a divorced woman has changed, along with the statistics. "The No. 1 reaction I get from people when I tell them I'm getting divorced is, ‘You're so brave,' " said Stephanie Dolgoff, a 44-year-old mother of two elementary-school daughters who was separated last year. "In the 1970s, when a woman got divorced, she was seen as taking back her life in that Me Decade way. Nowadays, it's not seen as liberating to divorce. It's scary."

The article links this increased social conservatism toward marriage to three things: one, a reaction among parents of young children today against their own parents' divorces in the 1970s, two, a sense that among upper-class couples, men are really peers who do their share of the parenting and domestic chores, and three, a sense that making a marriage work is part of being a good person, akin to doing yoga or eating local foods.

Priscilla Gilman, author of one of the many divorce memoirs that have come out in the past few years, says

I've definitely experienced judgment. Everyone said: ‘Isn't there anything more you can do? Your kids need you to be together. They're so little.' "

And so somehow, at least among the educated and affluent, divorce has become a source of shame, a mark of failure, a sign that you just aren't working hard enough, or worse, are so incredibly selfish as to not consider the children's needs. It is interesting that among highly educated Americans, about half of them think that divorce should be made more difficult. And only 17% of educated Americans agreed with the statement "Marriage has not worked out for most people I know" compared to 58% of less educated Americans.

So it is that divorce, like marriage, is a sign of social class and status. Marriage itself is not randomly distributed throughout the population, but more likely to happen if you're white and better educated. Now divorce, not surprisingly, is once again a form of social dirt. Divorce marks an educated and affluent American as a potential form of class pollution and so the people around the divorced person exhibit social distancing so as not to become divorced themselves (and of course there is some sense in this since survey data shows that when a couple in a tightly knit friendship network divorces, the other couples are more likely to divorce themselves).

Somehow 2011 now feels a bit like 1971, at least among the elites. Which may explain why, when my co-parent and I were in the process of moving into two separate homes, friends called to say things like "how can you do this to us." One of the most confusing things was that even friends who were divorced and remarried offered judgment. But the point was they were remarried, they were still trying to make it work, they were still good people. Unlike us.

I was thinking about changing my "single" status to "divorced". I figure that way people would quit assuming I was a nasty bitter cat lady. If I could come up with a fictitious husband that I "divorced" in my early 20s then I'd get more respect.

I think it really comes down to picking the right person for a long term relationship not picking a person for short term excitment. Even educated people make this mistake. I believe that if there is high conflict in a marriage it should end because newer studies show these marriages raise the most dysfuntional children. On the other hand, if its low conflict and your just bored I think many people should try.If your bored get a hobby. People expect their spouses to fulfill all their emotional needs and honestly its not possible over the long run.Plus lets be honest just like some people are not cut out for certain careers not all people are cut out for long term relationships. Finally, So many things are pulling at couples strings today that its so easy to lose sight of your spouse and take them for granted or drift apart. Its not always your spouse thats the problem, it could be your job for example.

What's particularly interesting about the NYT article you cite is how counterintuitive it is. That is, the Times was profiling liberal upper-middle class Brooklynites who were now turning their noses up at the concept of divorce, and seeing divorced people as failures.

You might expect this in Provo, Utah. In Park Slope, Brooklyn? Or the academic halls of Middlebury, Colby, Bates, Bowdoin, or Wesleyan? Not so much.

I'm a married woman (17 1/2 years, first, and hopefully, only marriage), but couldn't help but agree with your comments. It seems that, among the divorced women I know, they tend to land men much more quickly than my single, never-married women friends. Wonder why that is -- as you commented, a divorced person could be viewed as "damaged goods", yet a single, never-married person is seen as more of a liability. One friend met her future second husband within a month of her divorce becoming final. Others I know met new boyfriends well within months after separation.

As for this article: not sure if I see a stigma so much as a lot of people who just made poor choices the first time around. It seems to be commonplace in suburbia. My daughter's classmates are comprised of families with single parents, or parents who were previously married (usually the dad's second marriage), along with us "traditional" (first-time marrieds) families.

And practically everyone I know who are divorced are NOT kids -- many of these marriages were made by those well into their 30s. It almost seems that these divorces came about after kids were brought into the marriage. Maybe it's a big assumption, but it seems that kids contribute less to marital happiness than previously assumed. (I have only one child myself, and adding another party did stress the marriage a bit, but a couple needs to make adjustments or otherwise face a split. Just my opinion.)

Are you viewing women based on their ability to land a husband? I'm wondering whether you are aware that only 33% of single/divorced/widowed people want to marry. I certainly don't want to marry. Divorced people are probably more likely to be open to remarriage, because they made the choice to marry previously, so they are more likely to attempt to do it again and have positive feelings about the concept.

There are several studies that show that having children puts a strain on marriage, I think a blogger on PT wrote a post on it just this week.

My own "co-parent" and I stopped being a couple ten years ago; we are certainly still family. We eat family dinners together at least twice a week, celebrate all holidays and birthdays together, go to family weddings and reunions together, and more or less act like any two people raising children together except we're not together. We are hardly the only ones. A lot of "divorced" couples have managed to put their children and families front and center while also creating lives that are their own.

You say this is a trend and perhaps that is true. But could it also be true that it is trend of the upper class or more educated divorced couples and not of those struggling financially? Because even if many are doing a good job of co-parenting, many are not.